Ukraine struck a large Russian oil terminal in St. Petersburg on Sunday, defying President Trump’s demand that it stop such attacks, and continued to call out what it said were restrictions on a U.S.-provided military-grade satellite internet service.
The attack set the terminal ablaze, according to St. Petersburg’s governor and a Ukrainian drone company that said its weapons were used in the strike. It was Kyiv’s second reported strike on Russian oil infrastructure since President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week that Ukraine would resume such attacks after a brief pause. That pause was intended as a good will gesture to Mr. Trump, but Kyiv said it had yielded nothing but more restrictions on its military — and tensions rose with Washington in the meantime.
The latest round of frictions began with Mr. Trump’s Oct. 9 announcement that he had brokered a deal to buy Russian diesel fuel in a bid to lower gas prices before the U.S. midterm elections. Then on Friday, he announced a roll back of new U.S. sanctions on Russia. Mr. Zelensky denounced the moves as benefiting Russia, the aggressor in the war, while constraining Kyiv’s ability to fight.
The Ukrainian leader has taken particular issue with what he has described as “a planned operation” to cap the speed at which Ukrainian forces can use the satellite internet service, Starshield. Mr. Zelensky has not, however, explicitly said who he believed was behind that “operation.”
The service, the military-grade version of Starlink, is provided under a Pentagon contract through the company SpaceX. Kyiv uses Starshield to provide connections for its drones in both offensive and defensive military operations.
Kyiv has said that drones relying on the service stopped working at speeds above 100 miles per hour, and also experienced disruptions when flying at lower speeds.
Mr. Trump has denied ordering restrictions on Starshield and said he did not think the SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, had done so either.
Mr. Musk has suggested that any restrictions on the service came from the Trump administration, saying that Starshield systems are “owned and controlled by the U.S. government.” A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has demanded an investigation into the disruptions.
The Ukrainian military first reported the restrictions on Wednesday morning, saying they had disrupted operations at the front and endangered the country’s air defense capabilities. Kyiv has since contacted the Pentagon and SpaceX for answers, but said neither had responded. Some disruptions to the service persisted as of Saturday evening, according to Ukrainian officials and commanders.
“Based on the information currently available to us, we cannot confirm that Starshield’s full capabilities have been restored,” Denys Sienik, a senior Ukrainian diplomat in the United States, said on Saturday.
“Four (4!) days after we submitted our inquiries, we have yet to receive a response from the Pentagon or SpaceX,” Mr. Sienik added in a social media post. “We hope to receive confirmation that unlimited speeds have been restored and that Starshield is operating as it did previously, providing reliable communications essential to protecting our people amid intensified Russian aerial attacks.”
Ukrainian commanders offered mixed accounts of the situation on Saturday evening, with some saying disruptions continued while others said the service had returned to normal.
Separately, arson attacks on Starlink ground stations have been reported in Poland and Bulgaria. The Polish authorities have accused Russian intelligence services of carrying out the attack on the station in Poland, and the Bulgarian authorities have said that an investigation is ongoing. It was not clear whether the stations relay internet traffic to the Ukrainian military.
The Ukrainian military uses Starshield for a wide range of operations, including on attack drones that strike Russian command posts and on ground drones that deliver supplies to frontline troops. Mr. Zelensky has said interceptor drones also rely on the service to shoot down Russian long-range drones, although use in those cases appears to be limited.
Ukrainian forces use Starshield only for operations inside their country. The service does not work over Russian territory, meaning that Ukraine cannot use it to strike the Russian oil facilities that Mr. Trump wants spared.
Siobhán O’Grady contributed reporting.
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